MEDIA: How multi-channel viewing has forced social change

December 13, 1996
by MAGGIE BROWN

One of the more cheery seasonal discoveries I’ve made recently is that,
although Britain may be a nation of couch potatoes, with extra TV sets
becoming part of the standard bedroom furniture, we are not as atomised
as we think we are. I’d long assumed that TV viewing was going the way
of magazine publishing and Internet surfing, ever more specialised, with
the rise of special interest zones and niche cable and satellite pushing
the trend forward: children watching cartoon channels, men watching
football.